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The Internet as Surveilled Workplayplace and Factory

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European Data Protection: Coming of Age

Abstract

This paper discuses how the notion of workplace surveillance matters for discussing the political economy of social media. The notion of workplace surveillance is connected to the “digital labour” debate in Critical Media and Communication Studies. It is maintained that the commercial Internet is a workplace and factory, in which commodities and value are created and where workplace surveillance plays a crucial role in the exploitation of labour. The discussion is connected o Herbert Marcuse’s interpretation of Freud’s theory of drives, Dallas Smythe’s concept of the audience commodity, and Hardt’s and Negri’s concepts of the commons and the social worker/factory.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1892/2010), 152.

  2. 2.

    Ibid.

  3. 3.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/clz1m/google_employees_on_reddit_fire_up_your_throwaway/.

  4. 4.

    Ibid.

  5. 5.

    Karl Marx, Capital. Volume I (London: Penguin, 1867), 449.

  6. 6.

    Christian Fuchs, “Political Economy and Surveillance Theory,” op cit.

  7. 7.

    Fredrick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper, 1911).

  8. 8.

    Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 69.

  9. 9.

    For a detailed discussion of how various forms of surveillance relate to the capital accumulation process, see: Fuchs, “Political Economy and Surveillance Theory,” Critical Sociology 38 (2012, forthcoming).

  10. 10.

    Translation from German. Überwachung bei Lidl: So wurde der Spitzelskandal aufgedeckt, Stern Online, 25.3.2008, http://www.stern.de/panorama/ueberwachung-bei-lidl-so-wurde-der-spitzelskandal-aufgedeckt-615056.html. Accessed on March 21st, 2012.

  11. 11.

    Marx, op cit, Chap. 12.

  12. 12.

    Marx, op cit, Chap. 12.

  13. 13.

    Marxist Feminsm has stressed that also the free time is not alienation-free: Especially for women the household economy of the family means alienated and unpaid work that reproduces labour power of wage workers in the family.

  14. 14.

    Kevin Robins and Frank Webster, Times of Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual Life (London: Routledge, 1999): 245.

  15. 15.

    Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (London: Verso, 2007), 429.

  16. 16.

    ibid, 37 f.

  17. 17.

    ibid, 490.

  18. 18.

    Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” in Negotiations (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1995), 177–82.

  19. 19.

    Christian Fuchs, “A Contribution to the Critique of the Political Economy of Google,” Fast Capitalism 8 (2011, 1).

  20. 20.

    Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter, “Unions and Management by Stress” in Lean Work: Empowerment and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry, ed. Steven Babson (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 41–53.

  21. 21.

    Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: Norton, 1961).

  22. 22.

    Marcuse, op cit, 35.

  23. 23.

    ibid, 35 ff.

  24. 24.

    ibid, 36.

  25. 25.

    ibid, 35.

  26. 26.

    ibid, 37.

  27. 27.

    Julian Kücklich, “Precarious Playbour,” Fibreculture Journal 5.

  28. 28.

    Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1955).

  29. 29.

    Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 1.

  30. 30.

    Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 24.

  31. 31.

    Dallas W. Smythe, “Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 1 (1977, 3): 1–27.

  32. 32.

    ibid, 3.

  33. 33.

    Sut Jhally and Bill Livant. “Watching as Working. The Valorization of Audience Consciousness,” in The Spectacle of Accumulation. Essays in Culture, Media, & Politics (New York: Peter Lang, 1986/2006), 125.

  34. 34.

    Dallas W. Smythe, Dependency Road (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1981), 47.

  35. 35.

    ibid, 4.

  36. 36.

    Christian Fuchs, “Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet,” The Information Society 26 (2010, 3): 179–96.

  37. 37.

    For the discussion between Cultural Studies and Critical Political Economy of the Media & Comunication see: Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding, ed. Cultural Studies in Question (London: SAGE, 1997). Nicholas Garnham, “Political Economy and Cultural Studies: Reconciliation or Divorce?” in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, ed. John Storey (Harlow: Pearson, 1995/1998), 600–12. Lawrence Grossberg, “Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy. Is Anybody Else Bored with this Debate?” in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, ed. John Storey (Harlow: Pearson, 1995/1998), 613–24.

  38. 38.

    Christian Fuchs, Internet and Society. Social Theory in the Information Age (New York: Routledge, 2008). Christian Fuchs, “Social Software and Web 2.0: Their Sociological Foundations and Implications,” in Handbook of Research on Web 2.0, 3.0, and X.0: Technologies, Business, and Social Applications, Volume II, ed. San Murugesan (Hershey, PA: IGI-Global, 2010), 764–89.

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

  40. 40.

    Jürgen Habermas, The theory of communicative action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and system: a critique of functionalist reason (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987). Jürgen Habermas. The structural transformation of the public sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).

  41. 41.

    Jürgen Habermas. The structural transformation of the public sphere op cit, 19.

  42. 42.

    ibid. 152, 154. See also Hannah Arendt, The human condition. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 47, 68. 2nd edition.

  43. 43.

    Jürgen Habermas, The theory of communicative action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and system: a critique of functionalist reason (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987), 320.

  44. 44.

    Daniel Trottier, Social media as surveillance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).

  45. 45.

    https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy, version from September 23, 2011.

  46. 46.

    Jenna Wortham, ‘More employers use social networks to check out applicants’, The New York Times Bits Blog, August 20 2009, available at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/more-employers-use-social-networks-to-check-out-applicants/.

  47. 47.

    See: Leigh A. Clark and Sherry J. Roberts. 2010. “Employer’s Use of Social Networking Sites: A Socially Irresponsible Practice.” Journal of Business Ethics 95 (4): 507–525. Kristl H Davison, Catherine Maraist, R.H. Hamilton and Mark N. Bing. 2012. “To Screen or Not To Screen? Using The Internet For Selection Decisions.” Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal 24 (1,): 1–21. Kristl H Davison, Catherine Maraist and Mark N. Bing. 2011. “Fiend or Foe? The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Social Networking Sites for HR Decisions.” Journal of Business and Psychology 26 (2): 153–159. Patricia Sánchez Abril, Avner Levin and Alissa Del Riego. 2012. “Blurred Boundaries. Social Media Privacy and the Twenty-First-Century Employee.” American Business Law Journal 49 (1): 63–124.

  48. 48.

    Ibid.

  49. 49.

    Sánchez Abril, Levin and Del Riego, op cit, 69.

  50. 50.

    ibid, 104 f.

  51. 51.

    ibid, 104.

  52. 52.

    Clark and Roberts, op cit, 518.

  53. 53.

    ibid, 51.

  54. 54.

    Sut Jhally, The Codes of Advertising (New York: Routledge, 1987), 83.

  55. 55.

    Mario Tronti. In: Harry Cleaver, “The Inversion of Class Perspective in Marxian Theory. From Valorisation to Self-Valorisation,” in Open Marxism. Vol. 2, ed. Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn and Kosmos Psychopedis (London: Pluto, 1992), 137.

  56. 56.

    David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 165.

  57. 57.

    ibid, 166.

  58. 58.

    Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 250 f.

  59. 59.

    Nick Dyer-Witheford, “Digital Labour, Species Being and the Global Worker,” Ephemera 10 (3/4): 485.

  60. 60.

    http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.

  61. 61.

    Alain Lipietz. 1995. “The Post-Fordist World: Labour Relations, International Hierarchy and Global Ecology,” Review of International Political Economy 4 (1): 1–41.

  62. 62.

    ibid, 10.

  63. 63.

    ibid, 11.

  64. 64.

    Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM), iSlave Behind the iPhone: Foxconn Workers in Central China. http://sacom.hk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/20110924-islave-behind-the-iphone.pdf.

  65. 65.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides , accessed on February 8, 2011.

  66. 66.

    ibid.

  67. 67.

    CNN Online, Apple Manufacturing Plant Workers Complain of Long Hours, Militant Culture. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/06/world/asia/china-apple-foxconn-worker/index.html.

  68. 68.

    SACOM, op cit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, Kyrkogårdsgatan 10, 513, Uppsala, 75120, Sweden

    Christian Fuchs & Daniel Trottier

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  1. Christian Fuchs
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Correspondence to Christian Fuchs .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Pleinlaan 2, Brussel, 1050, Belgium

    Serge Gutwirth

  2. , TILT, Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, Tilburg, 5037 AB, Netherlands

    Ronald Leenes

  3. , LSTS, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Avenue de la Plaine 2, Brussels, 1050, Belgium

    Paul de Hert

  4. Research Centre for Information, Technology & Law, University of Namur, Rempart de la Vierge 5, Namur, 5000, Belgium

    Yves Poullet

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Fuchs, C., Trottier, D. (2013). The Internet as Surveilled Workplayplace and Factory. In: Gutwirth, S., Leenes, R., de Hert, P., Poullet, Y. (eds) European Data Protection: Coming of Age. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5170-5_2

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